“I’m always teaching in the kitchen and cooking is second nature to me”: Anne Burrell, 1969–2025

I think a lot of Gen Z kids went through a Food Network phase. In an era where it was harder and harder for kids to even walk themselves to school, cooking has become a way to practice independence and creativity. Even when I was a kid in the latchkey era, cooking shows hit a sweet spot of being “grown up” without the sexuality, violence or swearing that would upset our parents. As Julia Child and Yan Can Cook gave way to Emeril Lagasse and Wolfgang Puck, TV Food Network (later just “Food Network”) began its rise, becoming the second-fastest growing cable network by 1997 and a household name today. Today Food Network is synonymous with some of its biggest stars, including Rachael Ray, Paula Deen, Bobby Flay and Guy Fiyeri. 

Anne Burrell was never one of those top stars with their own cookware lines at Walmart, but she was a stalwart for the network, starting as a sous chef for Mario Batali on Iron Chef America and debuting her own show, Secrets of a Restaurant Chef, three years later.

In 2010, Worst Cooks in America debuted, a reality competition series where Burrell and another chef¹ split some absolutely terrible home cooks into teams and tried to coach them into becoming gourmet cooks. The show is still running and is on Season 28, including several celebrity editions (Maria Bamford has the inside scoop in “Weakness Is the Brand.”²) Anne appeared in every season but the most recent one.³

Anne had a loud, brash laugh, over-the-top hair, and the sense of humor you want someone hosting a show called Worst Cooks In America to have. The show started with (mostly) good-natured mockery of the hapless contestants, and then proceeded, slowly but surely, to something more inspirational as the very worst contestants were cut and the better contestants continued to improve.⁴ By the last episode, in the way of this kind of reality show, the top two contestants are ready to cook a gourmet, multi-course meal, coached in a commercial kitchen by their mentors (who aren’t allowed to help or taste the food). Even if you haven’t seen this show, you know how it goes: the real prize is the skills gained along the way, but the person who wins also gets a nice amount of cash, and everyone’s teary-eyed and proud. Burrell was very, very good in this role. She’d taught, and she said she liked the chance to teach again with the show. She always seemed ready to be the utility player the network expected as well, saying in one interview:

When you are a Food Network personality, you are very often required to go work with other people. You are required to do appearances on The Today Show or The Rachael Ray Show or Good Morning America — any of those shows. You have to work with someone else, and you have to be able to do it right now. This is a hard one, but you have to figure out how to be able to maintain your own self and personality, get your point across, and work well with someone else. If you don’t, at least look like you enjoy it. Smile.

She participated in many of Food Network’s charitable initiatives, including the New York City Wine & Food Festival, supporting the city’s healthy food powerhouse God’s Love We Deliver. 

I’m not sure sure she ever described herself as bi or pan, but when Ted Allen revealed she was dating a woman on a 2012 podcast, she told Page Six that she didn’t consider herself outed; she’d never hidden her sexuality. She married marketing executive Stuart Claxton in 2021.

Her big personality drew kids and adults to her, but like the best TV chefs, Anne Burrell also gave people the confidence to pick up a knife or some measuring spoons and just cook. She didn’t always make cooking seem easy: she made it seem achievable. Worst Cooks showed you could start with simple skills (or with no skills at all) and work your way up to what you wanted to achieve. 

I have watched a lot of Worst Cooks in America, and yes, I’ve cried at more than one season finale. I sometimes catch myself before I do something she deemed unsafe, and I’ll remind myself that “brown food tastes good” when I’m checking the color of something in the frying pan. Burell helped teach countless people to cook, and thanks to streaming and Food Network’s incredibly robust website, she’ll be teaching people for many years to come.

You might even want to give her most popular recipe on the Food Network website, “Pommes Chef Anne,” a shot yourself.

EDIT on July 27, 2025: Burrell’s cause of death has been revealed to be suicide. In the US and Canada, call 988 for help at any time. For queer-specific mental health support, in the US you can contact The Trevor Project at 1-866-488-7386. Someone told me years ago to put the suicide hotline in my phone so I’d have it when someone, anyone, needed it, and I’ve always thought it was good advice; it’s a fucking embarrassment and shame that I’ll need to do it again.

1. Beau MacMillan in the first season, Rachael Ray, Tyler Florence, Bobby Flay and many other guest chefs. ↩︎
2. Bronson Pinchot was also in her season!. ↩︎
3. Why wasn’t she in the current season? No one knows. ↩︎
4. The contestants, celebrity and otherwise, get lots of coaching behind the scenes in addition to the stuff they show for the cameras. ↩︎